Special Issue 74: Flawed Logic

Special Issue 74 of the SHAPE Journal

This edition collects together several recent papers by Jim Schofield, looking more closely at the fundamental problems with Formal Logic, and Schofield's theories on how Mathematics became a corrupting influence on the Sciences. 

This fascinating journey takes us from Stephen Wolfram trying to explain the Laws of the Universe using little black and white squares, to Troika's mesmerising visual art using Wolfram's Cellular Automata, to Sabine Hossenfelder's critique of "beauty" in Mathematics, to the Buddhist Logic of the Tetralemma. 

Along the way we discover that we cannot transcend the straightjacket of reductionist formalism until we appreciate the logic of evolving natural systems.

Read more...

Weak Theory

The Weakness of Pragmatically Derived Theory

Since "time immemorial", Mankind has seen Theory as facilitating the effective Pragmatic Use of all that is discovered about Reality! After all, primitive Man would insist, "What else are such ideas for?"

But, of course, there are other reasons for Theories, but none of these were even concretely considered in the earliest of epochs of Mankind, where the more intangible questions were always allocated to Supernatural Causes. And, even the simplest relations between elements of Natural Phenomena, were only relateable, in any useful way, by always deliberately holding situations as still as possible, for absolutely anything, to be extractible at all! And, the definer of required situations was embodied in the usual tenet:

"If it works, it is right!"

So, the initial Pragmatically useful investigations, all concentrated upon the "already dead" or tightly, artificially controlled situations - otherwise NO relations were obtainable. But, crucially, there was NEVER a single such "Stability", encapsulating absolutely ALL such situations: indeed, almost every imposed Stability was different - depending upon what had to be revealed! So, all but the very simplest undertakings, were unavoidably composed of many, very different required Stabilities, determined by the series of separate steps necessary, to finally end up with the required product, via a whole series of different processes - each confined within its own ideal and maintained circumstances.

Now, this meant that literally nothing was ever attempted within naturally-occurring Reality-as-is, because totally different conditions would be essential for every single step in any intended production. Hence, the accumulated Knowledge was involving many different contexts - each using very different extracted Laws. So, nothing was actually revealed about Reality-as-is,  and as that was the only situation naturally Common to all relations actually occurring-together there, and NOT the separate ones, each of which are only true within their own special artificial context thereafter could, and always were, actually be algebraically related to one another to thereby Construct a supposedly "Valid Science"! So, as NO SUCH Science could be constructed by such means, we simply must give what we do actually construct a different name: we call it Technology!

Indeed, the construction of ANY Discipline by such a means, using the Rationality of Mathematics to do so, is always wholly and misleadingly illegitimate. For, Mathematics, as it was originally devised and developed by the Ancient Greeks, is only true in totally Pluralistic Situations, wherein all relations are Forever Fixed.

For, though that is always true within Mathematics, it is NOT so within Concrete Reality-as-is - for that does not just complicate things, but, in contrast, actually Evolves them: and consequently the Wholly New can-and-does occur, and it can never be predicted before that first occurrence.

So, the then universal use of Mathematical Rationality, in any area of Explanation, and in any area, where things can naturally develop into the Wholly New, and with the objective of extending Understanding, is woefully mistaken!

And the Problem is most certainly due to Principle of Plurality.

For, in about the 5th century BC, two directly opposing Tenets of Reasoning were devised in different parts of the then civilised World! Each one aimed at producing a different Rationality to allow features of a given Part of Reality to be soundly related to one another via Thought alone! But, the basic assumptions upon which they were based were diametrically Opposite to each other, and, if used effectively would lead to very different conclusions. They were, of course, based upon very different, if totally valid, aspects of Reality-as-is: but were each considered to be universally applicable to absolutely Everything!

Of course, they had to be based upon profound extractions from Reality, and sadly, Reality actually conforms in different circumstances to TWO Diametrically Opposite Principles, which are found to act only in very different circumstances.

The Principle of Plurality was discovered by the Greeks within Mathematics, and wholly developed only within that context where two things were wholly legitimately established for Mathematics.

First, was the realisation that Simplified Relational Abstractions - relating wholly non-concrete, but nevertheless wholly valid relations, between such Abstractions. Indeed, it was the realisation of these special kinds of Abstraction that initially enabled the Rational Construction of Euclidian Geometry, and thereafter Mathematics as a whole. And this was because these Abstractions limited the Rationality involved to always valid Totally Fixed Relations, and therefore also its consequent laws.

While the other approach developed in India by The Buddha, involved deriving The Principle of Holism, which, on the contrary, involved most elements being capable of constantly available variation (both quantitative and qualitative), and hence having literally NO Forever Fixed properties and consequent Laws!

The Buddha's sound basis was, of course, the observable Living World all around him. 

Now, you might think that the direction determined by The Buddha, would be the best option: but, in the short term, it certainly wasn't! For, a qualitatively-varying and developing World, is certainly closer to the General Truth of All of Reality, than the West's primary philosophical choice of assuming a Wholly Pluralist World: but actually that choice gave them a handle - it had also given them effective Technology, within multiple easily-controllable Contexts, while The Buddha's Holistic alternative, though it gave them Everything at Once - was far too complex to effectively control or use, while maintaining its essential Nature, and they didn't develop beyond mere Pragmatism, for millennia.

What was clearly needed to develop the absolutely-necessary Holist Stance, was the creation and then development of a Purely Holist Science, which has not only failed to appear in The Orient, but is also almost universally absent in the West too.

There was a window for such a Discipline to occur - out of the Dialectics of the Idealist Philosopher GWF Hegel, especially as his best follower, Karl Marx, began to apply a thorough-going-and-creative detailed Holist approach to the Developments in Social History, and particularly to The Capitalist Economics of his day. But, the crucial development of also applying a similar approach to The Sciences was NOT undertaken: for though the Tempos of Man-Made History were graspable by the then available Human Thinking, those of most aspects of Physical Reality were not.

Of course, even within Marx's lifetime, Charles Darwin did begin to tackle the question of The Origin of Species, with a distinctive measure of success, but all the rest of Science required a similar holistic treatment, and that was still not yet forthcoming!

The writer of this paper (as well as many others, published over the last period in SHAPE Journal and on this blog), is both a fully-qualified Physicist and Mathematician, yet increasingly he is a trenchant critic of much of Modern Sub Atomic Physics, as well as pretty well all of Current Cosmology. He has spent well over a decade criticising the current, linked approaches in both of these areas, and has, only then, undertaken the task of beginning to establish a consistently Holist approach in these areas, and is now literally developing Holist Science from scratch.

Many diverse contributions have been written, and many more are actually currently in process of being produced, and already planned, at least in outline! This current paper, along with a small number of others, is being produced as an informing Introduction to the whole undertaking, and will, hopefully, set readers in such a position as to contemplate the size and content of perhaps the most important questions for Science at this present time!

Frege, Dummett and Plurality

Origins of the Current Crisis in Philosophy

In a recent proffering on Youtube, Michael Dummett explained both the current contributions, as well as the final failures of Gottlob Frege, concerning the Philosophy of Mathematics - but, as it turned out, he was also, in fact, actually revealing the widespread mistakes, as well as the many general inadequacies, throughout all past and present Philosophers (including himself), concerning that important area of Theory.

For Frege, along with all the rest of his co-thinkers, made (and still make) Logic - some kind of crucial "Absolute", coming both uniquely and only from Man, rather than being a failed attempt, by Man, to reveal an objective set of the real changing relations, within all of Reality-as-is! But, he is, most certainly, not alone, Mankind in general has believed this for the last two and a half thousand years - indeed, ever since the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th century BC.

And, they made it seem to be the case, by devising a wholly new kind of Relation, which, for the first time ever, devised relations between certain Abstractions, rather than between existing objects, and which therefore could, within those special circumstances, and types of Abstraction, be wholly Constant. But, they were NOT abstractions like the names of concretely-existing things, they were instead ONLY of one special type of relation occurring between particular kinds of Abstractions!

As this is a subtle and even surprising kind of relation, I feel that I must give some original examples, used by the Greeks, in constructing Euclidian Geometry.

The first was The Point!

Now, this abstraction was composed of a totally disembodied Position. It had absolutely zero extension in the Real World, delivering only a Position, and nothing else, but as such DID indeed have relations with other such Abstractions

- such as The Line!

Now, this was defined by two Points and delivered a Direction. It, too, had NO extension in Space, but could genuinely be related to other such Abstractions, thereby beginning to define both a Direction - and ultimately Mathematics!

Next came The Plane - and then, an extended series of others, that because of the unique disembodied relations to others of the same kind, could indeed, deliver a consistent set of extractions from Reality, which could not only be useful, but, because of their nature, deliver a Fixed System of such relations.

They had invented a Pluralist System! Now, this could seem to be a useless, if consistent System, but it turned out to be very close indeed to what Mankind had found to be the easiest way, to not only make sense of a version of Reality-as-is, but also to actually make things too.

The only way to do anything with situations in the Real World, was, first, to hold them resolutely still - as in all technology and the Scientific Method itself. This necessarily involved keeping all used situations as simple and unchanging as possible, so they were already attempting to approach the perfection of what was to become necessary for Mathematics to be legitimately applied to it.

So, the new intellectual gains made by the Greeks, coupled with the well-established Pragmatism given by "If it works, it is right!", definitively defined the Technological Ideal for getting reality to behave as desired, and indeed as required!

Now, also, these procedures fitted in well with giving sizes to the actual processes occurring in Reality, because all the measurements, with regard to some kind of Scale, was as important in trying to explain phenomena causally.

And, long before Quantitative Laws were crucial in identifying under exactly what circumstances significant Qualitative Changes occurred, and thereby suggesting Causes! They could be loosely correlated to such changes in Qualities, even if the reasons extracted were NOT Quantitative Laws, but Additional Qualitative Explanations.

Thus, Separate Explanatory Reasons necessarily grew up alongside Quantitative Laws, which though they related to Quantitative values, NEVER actually explained Why Qualitative Changes occurred, but only When!

Indeed, no strictly Quantitative Law could EVER explain any Qualitative Change. They may be associated, but NEVER causally!

However - as they say - "The tail can wag the dog!". and it did so technologically, leaving the explanations as to Why, NEVER addressed.

So Technology developed apace, leaving Explanations increasingly unaddressed.

Indeed, any remaining causal Explanations were relegated to be an accompanying narrative ONLY.

So, these two approaches almost became Different Disciplines - named Technology and Science!

Therefore, the Technology was more about Delivery. While the Science was increasingly Speculative, rather than Explanatory.

And, the surprising thing was that these two cores were increasingly made subordinate to any Mathematical Relations that had been fitted-up to measured data sets, acquired by these two sets of Experts, who had somehow to work together.

But, in watching a recent historical account on YouTube, put together by Gareth Samual (See the Pattern), where his stepping stones to a Theory of the Ether were always the Equations resulting from the various theoretical investigations - always "validated" only by successful predicted use. But, literally NONE of them were correct, and Samuel explained that effective predictions could be achieved with formulae, in which as many as 20 different constants had been included, yet they had NO real physical determinators within Concrete Reality, and were merely only "adjusted-to-fit"!

Also in Drummett's extended piece upon Frege, he frequently referred to Logic as both Absolute-and-Given, which, most certainly it isn't!

So, the question arises, "Exactly where was that System of Reasoning originally established absolutely" - which without any doubt, was supposedly achieved in the Greek Intellectual Revolution, of the 5th Century BC, where it defined the elements of Euclidian Geometry as:

Absolute Relational Abstractions

which it was intended only to apply to these very unusual types of relational entities, which are certainly NOT the case generally in All Reasoning, and most certainly NOT the only ones used in what he calls Logic!

 

 

What is the Philosophy of Mathematics?

 

Worlds created from abstractions are virtual, not real

What is Mathematics?

And what is its Relationship to Reality?

I have been looking for satisfactory answers to the questions above for sometime - none are forthcoming! Having just watched a couple of lecture videos on Youtube - one by Ray Monk on The Philosophy of Mathematics and another via Google Talks by a Dr. Stephens on Emmie Noether, my question (posed by the title to this paper), that literally demands to be addressed, remains unanswered. It was needed to clear up exactly where Reality-as-is terminates, and the products of Human Thinking, both claim to take over and intervene, by Reversing-the-Process, and beginning instead to contribute to the actual defining of "A Reality" via man-made Purely Formal Relational System!

The Ray Monk video

Indeed, though not admitted as such, that actual change was one of the unavoidably Key Products of the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th century BC, when a successful attempt to do precisely that was actually made possible by their invention-and-use of certain

Simplifying Relational Abstractions

applied to concretely impossible, yet mathematically essential relations, between such things as:

               

- Points with zero parts

- Lines with zero thickness 

- Planes with zero depth

For it was these abstractions, and these alone, that made Mathematics possible, by restricting the whole exercise, with such transforming physical constraints: that they also made all subsequent relations in that discipline to become Forever Fixed in quality! Everything was made, by these changes, to conform to an essential

Principle of Plurality

- but though easy to validly insist upon, within the Realm of Pure Forms alone, it was wholly impossible to apply in Concrete Reality-as-is! So, when usefully applied to "such a Reality", that too, ALSO just had to be majorly-constrained to deliver only such necessarily-Fixed-Relations- achieved by forcibly-limiting the situation involved, into a rigidly-constrained Stability - indeed, into a guaranteed Pluralist Situation, to enable Mathematics to be effectively-used.

Therefore: Reality is NOT revealed by Mathematics!

Reality has to be made to conform to our abstractions.

However, such seemingly-unchanging Stabilities can occur naturally, and often do if only temporarily, AND, in addition, man-made Pluralist Stabilities were often fairly easy to both construct-and-maintain: the consequently extract Pluralist Laws, from both such contexts, were then further-assumed to be the Natural Truth, but usually often hidden under many overlying and masking extras. 

So, this major and false inversion, promoted Pluralist Laws as the "Actual Truths of Reality", and material Reality-as-is was demoted into becoming "a misleading fiction"! And, consequently, all arranged-for situations in Production, which obeyed those Pluralist Laws, were wrongly seen as exposing the "Real Underlying Reality" of the natural world.

But that isn't True!

Also, all insertions algebraically, from one Pluralist Law into another different one, are totally illegitimate! The whole universally-established Method of Mathematical Rationality as a means-of-extending these discoveries into a comprehensive valid discipline, are also totally mistaken when dealing with Reality-as-is.

But, Mathematical Plurality was universally employed because it validly enabled a whole and successful means of implementing a totally reliable Method of achieving Successful Consequential Productions, merely by breaking the Production Process down into a series of separate individual stages, each with its own physical restrictions and consequent Pluralist Laws!

And paired with the longtime-prior, pragmatist legitimiser of "If it works, it is right!" the New Approach vastly-enlarged what could possibly be done: for the new system was a truly major advance over what it replaced! And, it even encouraged the beginnings of a possible alternative and Causal Approach, with added-in possible notions of exactly why things behaved as they did.

Though the two sets of ideas did not mesh at all well, and Causal Explanations were never an integrated part of the Main System! Explanations provided merely a helpful accompanying narrative. And, any really-attempted causal explanations were restricted only to limited areas of study, which were naturally much closer to Pluralist situations, always due to these sustained periods of "Stability" (which could last millions of years, admittedly) as were evident in the Night Sky of the Heavens!

So, it is not surprising that such an evident conducive Tail would wag the confusing real Dog, and put the usually defeating nature of most of Reality as being due entirely to the large number of different active contributions overlying the hidden significant determinators! So, one way of "revealing" the "main determinator" in a not-too-complex system, would be to purposely-suppress all the "inessentials", and so completely reveal the underlying "main cause".

Science was deliberately converted into a wholly Pluralist Discipline, via Mathematics and pragmatism, because in such arranged-for situations, wholly successful productions were always possible, proving the value of the approach: though, of course, it could not lead to a successful integrated Theoretical System on the natural world - indeed a real Science- but only Technologies, involving many separate, achievable Contributing Productions, but NO integrated-and-cerebly-developable Theory.

Indeed, it is correct to insist that, at best, Mathematics can only deliver a partial Reflection of the Reality it seems to deliver, but simultaneously it can, in addition, deliver a whole collection of related features, BUT ONLY from elsewhere in the involved realm, where Mathematics legitimately reigns- that is within Ideality!

Indeed, Ideality, being only a Conceptual World of Pure Forms alone, enables Mathematics, but NOT Reality, to be infinitely extended! Many of the extensions to Mathematics, brought in to "explain" features of Reality that Plurality fails to deal with, are also totally illegitimate in Reality-as-is, so can tell us Absolutely Nothing: they seem not to exist anywhere in concrete Reality.

Maybe I should mention a few of these, in case you are in doubt!

How about Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Quantum Entanglement, Multiple Universes, The Uncertainty Principle, The Heat Death of the Universe, The Big Bang, Initial Inflation, Infinite Expansion, Normalisation, and many, many more!

But many of the real problems caused by the Illusions of Plurality, can be compounded in various different ways: and perhaps the most important ones are those caused by the mistakes of Plurality, but complicated by the formulaic simplifications caused by substitutions from one pluralist equation into another, because, once two, or more equations have been merged in this way, the result will certainly NOT be delivered by using that combined Form, as the concrete result is never a single process, but still a simultaneous set of mutually effecting processes.

For though we have made a combined single Formula, in Reality such will still be individual processes competing for resources and producing outputs into a general pool of consequent resources, once again to be competed for. Yet, the original amounts of the various components now being lost in the new and different pool!

And the algebraically arrived-at formula cannot in any way mirror what is holistically going on in material Reality. 

And, to complicate things even further, apart from being essential resources, when each process proceeds separately, many secondary products from one process can and will affect another when all happening together: and these will be totally unknown from the wholly separate cases that delivered the supposedly contributing processes... 

The Death of Mathematics

The Future of Science and Philosophy

Following the Demise of Mathematics

as

The Lingua Franca of Reality

I have been a Scientist and Philosopher for sixty years now - but I fell-out with my primary subjects and evident mathematical abilities when I was just 18 years old, in my very first term at University (studying for a degree in Modern Physics). And that was already the second profound setback in my, by then, very short life.

I had first, while still at School, settled upon Mathematics, as the key to Understanding the World, as I turned out to be a natural in seeing and using its Theorems and Proofs, and was always top of my A stream Classes in the Grammar School that I then attended, from my prior Elementary School. For I alone, had managed to pass my Scholarship to enable me to attend - which surprised everybody, both in my family of unskilled labourers, the teachers at my initial school, and even those I was taught by at the Grammar School. In spite of being top of my classes throughout my whole education there, and ultimately obtaining a record 7 "A" and "S" Level Passes by the age of 18. Indeed, the one constant comment upon every single one of my School Reports was "promising". And, having been pressed to take those 7 Sixth-Form courses and exams, my achieved marks were not what I would have achieved, if I had taken just 3, as did everyone else.

But though while still at school I was initially-at-least satisfied with Mathematics as a general Lingua Franca, it was very soon found wanting in my increasing commitment to Physics, because instead of merely formal relations to phenomena, Physics also delivered Explanations for them, too - it was possible to also understand Why things behaved as they did, and luckily all my Science teachers thought the same.

So, though I continued to excel in Mathematics, it was Physics that held the promise of a continuing expansion of my understanding of the world! So, I only applied to take a Physics degree at the Universities I applied to, in the late 1950s. 

Hence, I was devastated when in my very first term at University, literally no explanations were forthcoming whatsoever: the sole purpose of study was to arrive at a mathematical formula that fitted the acquired evidence.

And questions weren't allowed: it was assumed that if you asked for an explanation, you couldn't follow the Maths!

So, the only access to staff that was available, were the postgraduate demonstrators who helped with experiments, but they were the worst, and would get angry at my insistence upon explanations. They were all involved in the NEW Physics, a subject totally dominated by Mathematics - explanation was banned!

Clearly because of my abilities in Mathematics I could do what was increasingly demanded, just as my educators were less and less competent at the explanatory side! I who, contradictory to my tutors probably the best at handling their version of Mathematics, was also the most critical of the way they were doing it.

I had taken up Painting, when I was 16, so I joined the University Art Society, and by the end of the Academic year I was running it as its secretary. But I couldn't be satisfied with what I was doing in Physics at all, so, I spent a great deal of time in the magnificent Brotherton Library within Leeds University, seeking an alternative to what I was being given within my course. I found nothing at first, until I slightly widened my criteria, after which I found a book entitled Materialism and Empirio Criticism- which was a trenchant philosophical critique of Henri Poinaré and Ernst Mach - who originally developed the Positivist Empirio Criticism, which later became the Basis for Modern Physics!

The book answered their mistakes philosophically, but not physically, so I decided to trace his sources - the writer of the book was Vladimir Iliych Ulianov (more commonly known as Lenin - the Marxist who later was to lead the successful Russian Revolution in 1917). The philosophic stance involved followed Karl Marx's criticisms of Pluralist Philosophy within Social Phenomena (usually termed Marxism, but more properly termed Dialectical Materialism).

But neither Marx, nor anyone else, had ever applied the new philosophic stance comprehensively to The Sciences! I knew what had to be done: I had to undertake that task, but aged just 19, I simply did not even know how to start - so I joined the Communist Party and afterwards a series of other purportedly Marxist Parties, but I never found a single person who could help.

I turned to other things over the years, becoming first a Sculptor, and then a System Software Expert, and in that capacity finally returning to Higher Education, with a series of posts in three countries - but it was in my expertise in designing tailor-made Software Aids to High Level Researchers, followed by a final career as a Writer, that I finally knew sufficient to do the job myself!

It certainly wasn't straightforward, though, as a universally-subscribed-to major limitation upon all experimental investigations, permanently terminated the study of Reality-as-is, for, instead, the major distortion of only ever taking data from entirely artificially-produced Pluralist Contexts, and also, over two millennia, finding it imperative to have to implement diverse tricks and workarounds, to try and circumvent the unavoidable short-comings of maintaining such an entirely and mistaken and consequently strictly Pluralist approach, especially when it came to using the inevitably distorted Laws, in every single form of consequent Production.

For, in making successfull the pragmatic production of particular outcomes, meant that what had to be arranged-for, and carried through successfully, was NOT involving Reality-as-is, but instead entirely by achieving predictable outcomes within an artficially-constructed-and-maintained Pluralistic Context! While those arrangements did deliver what was required, it was absolutely always achieved entirely within separate unique, artificial situations, that were always different in each and every case.

And this made it impossible to get Generally True Laws, as each-  and every one only worked in its own tailor-made Pluralist situation.

Consequently, NO Everywhere-Applicable-Law was available: and, in addition, NO purely-manipulative-substitutions between different laws were possible! Indeed, the whole set of Formal manipulations - the mathematical transformations of supposedly Scientific Formulae were totally illegitimate, as being the case in Reality-as-is. Consequently, the whole usual systems were illegitimate, and all purely on-paper manipulations were simply wrong!

In actual Real World production, every Law was forced to have its own tailor-made artificial context (technology): and complex situations had to be transformed into a series of entirely separate experiments to even be able to achieve a required overall result. Hence, all cerebral investigations were impossible to he legitimately carried out, and Real Theory was impossible!

And, the reason, for all this, was the Pluralist Myth of Stability as the Natural State, which was always, in fact, an unnaturally-maintained "Stability"! For, in Holistic Reality-as-is, all stabilities are naturally-and temporarily-maintained, as "Balanced Stabilities". So, the Pluralist assumptions are never true and actual "Balanced Stabilities" turn out to be naturally-selected bundles, consisting of balanced-diametrically-opposite processes, so selected for as to be self-maintaining, by means of equal and opposite processes in the bundle, one of which, that with anotherhaving the same external initiator, will always counter the errant process. And then, to compound the overall Effect, the various bundles involved perform, in the same way, by their mixes of cancelling opposites.

As soon as the artificially Fixed World and the Fixed Laws of Plurality are replaced by a multiply-simultaneous factor Holist World, the evident Interludes of apparently stable natures of the natural stabilities of Plurality cease to exist, and Hierarchies of Systems and Subsystems governed by opposites come into the reckoning in far more complex ways. This is why a dialectical logic is needed rather than a formal one.

Now, in such a short paper as this, a comprehensive set of explanations is, of course, impossible! The very fact that it hasn't been attempted in two and a half millennia illustrates the difficulties involved. But this work  is now, finally, securely underway,  and will indeed result in an even larger Intellectual Revolution than did the Greek contribution in the 5th century BC. 

But if Mathematics can no longer be seen as the language of nature, how should we approach it going forward, and what will ultimately replace it as our primary means of understanding?

 

A New Kind of Science?

... 

A Critique of - and Alternative to - Stephen Wolfram's

 "New Kind of Science"

With his computer software products of the last 30 years - solely based upon Cellular Automata - Stephen Wolfram builds, by very simple rules, certain surprisingly complex patterns. He compares them with the Binary 1s and 0s in Computing Machine Code where they are used to emulate a whole range of complex systems, that he and the Computing community have developed to a remarkable degree. But here, involving only Black and White identical squares, which via the "Wolfram Language", he has suggested a further, "more basic-and-abstract" set of Software developments, which, he insists, transcend all the anomalies-and-contradictions of the two currently dominant theories in Physics, such as those delivered by both Relativity Theories on the one hand, and Quantum Theories, on the other.

For, he insists that the far-more-basic study of all the results involved in his new kind of simple abstracted elements, are very different from those currently subscribed-to in those "Fundamental Theories" mentioned above. And, to that same end, he has also produced a "Wolfram-based" piece of software, incorporating, in addition, an extensive Knowledge Base, and possible direct access to its solutions, when posed with obviously relevant questions typed into it.

BUT, (and this is most important) he nowhere in his "New Science" addresses any of the causes inherent in those usually Subscribed-to-Areas of Theory and Knowledge, which have always been wholly dependant, ever since the Greek Intellectual Revolution, absolutely solely upon the artificial Rationality of Mathematics.

This foundation was possible due to an invention I have dubbed Simplified Relational Abstractions.

These abstractions were very effective, and have been used ever since, but they are true only in the relationships between Fixed Pure Forms, that always exist only in Forever Fixed Relations to one another (Laws or Rules), and therefore could alone be used, via Theorems and their Proofs, using that unique Mathematical Rationality, which, in order to work at all, just had to conform exactly to The Principle of Plurality.

But Plurality was not, and never can be true, of literally all other Reasoning, which instead must conform to the Principle of Holism, in which all "Laws" or "Rules" eventually vary, and such qualitative changes have to be the sole-means of Rationality, used in tracing out the only possible qualitative changes. Purely quantitative changes can never deal with such areas, and they will definitely include both General Reasoning, and ALL of The Sciences too, for all natural reality evolves and changes over time unless we try and stop it doing so. 

Now, though Plurality can-and-will approximate to Reality within Effectively Stabilised Situations, they are never, as is usually assumed - The Natural Norm of Reality. They are instead actually only temporary, if occasionally very long-lasting interludes, which will always terminate as the nexus of mutually-supporting-factors, are ultimately always and naturally successfully challenged. All Real Qualitative Development simply MUST, and indeed WILL, only conform to Holism.

At the same time as the Ancient Greeks were settling upon Plurality as the means for studying reality, in India - majorly influenced by The Buddha - they were settling instead upon Holism, as the rational Basis of all Reasoning, AND crucially all Development too! But, of course, both of these conceptions were, at that time, inadequately defined, as Mankind was, in both cases, breaking wholly new ground, and as with all such "Incomplete Understanding", it will always turn out to be less-than-sufficient, to include all the relevant factors.

Indeed, a crucial tenet of Modern 21st Century Holism, stresses the unavoidable multifarious basis of all Reality-as-is, as being inevitably composed of many different-yet-simultaneous factors - all of which do NOT just SUM, but actually affect one-another continually and qualitatively.

So, Causality in Fixed-Law Plurality, and hence also in Wolfram's identically philosophically-based stance, all fixed Rules are either ON or OFF, and can only Quantitatively SUM, when acting simultaneously with other Pluralist Laws. 

However, in Holism which more accurately represents how physical reality behaves, a huge variety of interactions are possible - all of which can change-each-other in various ways. While overall - taking all of them together, actually produce a range of diverse, consequent Phases, depending upon the weights, but also crucially the kinds, of the influences involved. The crucial thing about Plurality, is that the Laws cannot change qualitatively, and, as such, remain fixed no matter what the containing circumstances are.

But, the same cases within Holism, because of their mutually modifying effects, infer an almost continuous variation in how they all act: including, once changed, how they then react-back-upon what changed them, and, indeed, change that too, in consequence! You are bound, therefore, to get both Recursion, and even the ultimate appearance of the Wholly New: where it WILL, in such circumstances, also be the Emergence of total Novelty - real Qualitative Development is therefore not only possible, but inevitable - and this is reflected in the dynamic reality we observe.

Now, additionally, there will also be actual contention- indeed sometimes all the way to processes producing the Direct Opposites of other processes. And the amount of such opposition, will vary in various ways from effectively Ignorable in one direction, all the way to Total Cancellation, with neither process NOT having any effect, on to the Total Dominance of one over the other (and all states in between these distinctive Phases). And Recursion will also guarantee that the many modifying Effects will "in sum" create constant variations in literally everything, though itself will be adjusted by the sizes of the differently-acting Opposites.

Now, in such a melée, it seems inevitable that very long-lasting Stabilities could, and occasionally would, be totally impossible, but that turns out to be incorrect! Indeed, when the above relations, all acting together, work themselves out, a kind of Balanced Stability is achieved, with the diametrically opposite processes controlling groups of situations into constantly varying, yet effectively "constant" results by a built-in entire controlling into a "Negating Balance of Opposites", which whenever an unbalancing commences, quite mechanistically also varies what will change it back in the opposite direction: though all such operations occur over very short time-spans.

Interestingly, these "Balanced Stabilities" are NEVER permanent, and in rare Crisis Situations, can and indeed do, carry on into overall avalanches of collapses of all the Balanced Stabilities into a total Dissolution of the overall System of them, into what appears to be Total Chaos! The name usually applied to these situations when we observe them in society, is a Revolution, but similar patterns are observable in natural development too - and its following resolution into a New System of balanced stabilities, if such occurs, is termed philosophically, an Emergence.

Stephen Wolfram

Now, all of these criticisms of Plurality, also apply equally well to Wolfram's new alternative Science: so it is certainly no solution to the myriad problems associated with the Pluralist Stance - the well-beloved mathematical view - and the crisis it has precipitated in Physics.

So, now, we must begin to adequately equip a genuinely New Kind of Science - based resolutely in a New Holism - as the old historical version of holistic thinking is, as yet, ill-equipped for the necessary task of solving Science's philosophical inadequacies. 

We dealt with some possible new Holistic approaches in the last issue of SHAPE Journal - Circles, Spirals and Helices

Now, both the problems, and the virtues, of the Holist Stance arise from its maximal variability! For, without any Stable Waystations being available within its Reasoning, all Explanations get turned into different seemingly Infinite Regressions. So, there have to be both Processes and consequent achieveable Waystation States, wherein reasonably "long-lasting Interludes of Relative Stability are achievable, where in, in some cases at least, the old pluralist methods could still be used within the achieved Temporary Stabilities. BUT, it could never extend to predicting those States' guaranteed terminations, and, crucially, what they would then be replaced by. Indeed, ALL Qualitatuive Changes are totally beyond Plurality!

So, even in the best of circumstances, the actual trajectory of all Development is always unavoidably due to a kind of ever-present Blind Holism - it can never describe exactly what you will get in such Holistic Changes! But, Reality is never in a single Universe-wide State. It is inevitably structured as a Hierarchy of Levels, and within those Levels of Further separate Localities - all ruled by Holism, but everywhere attaining temporary interludes of Stability - both achieved, maintained and ultimately terminated along with its temporarily "stable states".

Let us begin to investigate just how these are achieved!

Here again we must approach "Circles, Spirals and Helices", because it is never in single instances that qualitatively changed Compositions, and, therefore caused flips to alternate States, are thereby achieved: it can only happen in constantly repeated Cycles of Processes, which, alone, can over-time dramatically change compositions, and hence ultimately precipitate Wholly New Outcomes. Indeed, such changes, initially, have negligible effects: but, nevertheless, they will be affecting many different simultaneous processes - to different extents - until the whole system flips-over into a series of different modes, each of which, either settle into a self-adjusted relatively stable state, or precipitate an overall collapse into a major Qualitative Change!

The Cyclic Nature of the System, both "steadies the boat", in one sense, by briefly returning to previous conditions, but also ensures Cumulative Build-Ups, that take the System to Wholly New Circumstances. The multi-factor nature of these Cyclic Systems is governed by the multiple simultaneous interactions, which can both steady things, or alternatively build-up to destructive proportions.

It is the former of these two alternatives that usually dominates, and ensures that the situation remains stable most of the time - look at the cyclical stabilities of atoms, metabolic pathways, ecosystems, orbits in planetary systems and the fusion reactions in stars. These recurrent stabilities throughout nature allow us to use Plurality and Mathematics to understand their forms, but we understand nothing about their underlying dynamics, lifespans or origins. 

These cyclical stabilities boil down to the unavoidable Causal Dominance of Diametrical Opposites: for ONLY these can oppose their opposites, entirely cancel their effects, and maybe even precipitate their individual domination or even demise!

Now, these latter paragraphs reflect the very different Nature of Holistic interactions. They not only differ from the usual Pluralistic Causality, but can actually take different consequent and even diametrically opposite paths. So, there is a great deal more to it, than I have inferred here.

Holistic Rationality is still in its infancy, and that also means that Holistic Science (especially in subjects like Physics), is practically non-existent! We see its origins in the Dialectical Materialism of Karl Marx, both in History and in Capitalist Economics, but even that took Marx the rest of his life to just begin the process, AND even in those areas it has to be constantly updated with new study, for nothing we discover is fixed like in Mathematics, everything constantly evolves!


ASIDE:

I cannot let this important passage pass, without describing its relationship to "Balanced Stabilities". For these are the Holistic Equivalents of all the Supposedly Basic, and potentially-permanent Stabilities in Plurality.

But, of course, they are in fact the very Opposite of Basic, and are, somehow, actively-maintained as Stable (presumably via the cumulative effects of processes in Repeating Cycles), which usually effectively eliminate all destructive contributions by the ever increasing successes of Pairs of Diametrical Opposites, not only selectively eliminating all others, but also, settling into whole sets of Balanced Pairs of opposites, acting as self-adjusting maintainers of the achieved Overall Stability.

Now, the switches, from absolutely NO causally-explained Qualitative changes, as in all Pluralist Science, is still not universally accepted, as most scientists actually recognise such changes, but either totally fail to explain what causes them, and/or just signal-and-describe, rather than explain, the occurrence of such changes, by merely noting-when the exceeding of a previously observed and thereafter known threshold occurs, and the consequent switching to a different behaviour then happens, without any explanation for that change in the Science.

Clearly, this tells us nothing: but such was the established norm, with the various behaviours considered to be adequately described by mathematical equations - that have been fitted-up to measured values from experiments, and both dominated by, and sufficient for, Effective Pragmatic Use (or Technology) only, but often with little or no explanation of Reality (or Science).

The "use-tail" therefore always wagged the "explanatory dog"!

And with the dexterity of Human Hands, tool-making and the development of our intelligence, even that had been sufficient to transform their World and Lives truly significantly! With the gains of the Greek Intellectual Revolution, Humanity would continue to do so for still more millennia.

But a New Approach (as yet undefined) was even then, clamouring-at-the-Door! It was the need for a deeper Understanding of our world, and therefore Real Explanation of its mysterious and dynamic nature. Now there had been many failed attempts to do this in human history, via Magic, Chance, Religion or even the Plans of Great or Wise Leaders, but what was already becoming possible were the emerging means of investigating aspects of Reality - in order to really Understand them - not the Technology which took over, but Science itself!

But the steadfast commitment to Plurality was already deflecting attention, even then, into only Fixed Laws limited to constrained contexts: and the vast majority of Causal Systems were not Pluralistic at all! So what began to be discovered were individual Laws, within rigidly-maintained circumstances, but never how those limitations and their necessarily Fixed Laws could be transcended, which was still causally unknown!

Two millennia ago, The Buddha was already developing an alternative approach, which later became known as Holism: and slowly the dynamics of Natural Qualitative Change began to be attempted to be addressed by human beings - but still not yet via a developed System of proven ideas, though, initially, at least, by continuing re-assessments and occasional profound Thought - and always available for improvement.

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2017/06/oh-my-gosh-its-covered-in-rule-30s/

But, in Science, that approach was minimally developed because of the Pluralist Myth that absolutely everything can be adequately addressed by Fixed Laws alone. They most certainly cant!And, what is almost entirely undeveloped in Physics, for example, are the Dynamical Emergences of Qualitative Changes, as causally explained phenomena.

Yet that is absolutely imperative, if Science is to form a basis for most Reliable Understanding: and we must start with how they work within recurring processes as in Cycles, as in Orbits and in Spins.

With the one-off occurrence of an effect, qualitative changes are likely to be small and soon swamped by a cascade of other very different ones. But, in constantly repeated, seemingly-identical cycles, such changes can, and indeed often do, accumulate into an ever growing Effect, which can ultimately become dominant, and flip the whole situation into a different mode! Now, such things can literally never happen with Fixed Pluralist Singly-happening Laws: but, with collections of multiple, different and simultaneous Holistic sets of Laws, particularly in repeated Cycles, they could be very likely indeed.

But, such changes within an Holistic set of laws can do several very different things! They can establish temporary Stabilities for long periods. Aberrations can cause the total collapse of such a Stability. Cycles can selectively eliminate aberrations in Systems. They can allow Qualitative Changes in Real Development. 

And, as the common form of "Stability" in a Holistic World, it is only ever temporarily delivered within a Balanced Stability of many laws - linked Laws primarily in Balanced Pairs of Diametrical Opposites, such aberrations though similarly ineffectual singly, are on the contrary, within constantly repeated Cycles, highly likely to grow, for though normally singly eliminated by the self-adusting Pairs, which can usually overcome a single aberration, they will, on the contrary, be highly susceptible within constantly repeated identical Cycles, so such aberrations can then accumulate over many repeats, which can in some circumstances even precipitate a complete dissolution of the system - not only of single Balanced Pairs, but could, along with others, dissociate an entire Balanced Stability.

In an Holistic situation Formal Logic doesn't hold! 

But it is still Causal!

Many simultaneous causes contend!

You have to reveal The Whole Mix!

But, notice that, because any diametrical opposites will mutually-cancel, they will not be easily eliminated: on the other hand, less related and thereby balanced-and-maintained components, will instead be selectively-eliminated over the constant, successive repeats of the ongoing Cycles - to leave only the more retainable content over time!


ASIDE:

The Nature of Modern Holism, not appreciated until very recently, now involves very different dynamic scenarios to those of the usual Pluralist Stance, because the simultaneous interactions of multiple contending and modifying factors, are now seen to involve a whole range of different outcomes, that were wholly inconceivable previously in Plurality.

Indeed, even The Tetralemma, as mentioned in the writings of many Buddhist Philosophers, that listed the 4 conceivable judgements, that cover all the possible applicabilities of such ideas - indeed that they can be

True

or Untrue,

both True & Untrue,

or neither True or Untrue

- instead of being only absolutely unexplained Descriptions, are now each capable of being covered by a series of rational explanations for the first time.

And the initial places these began to become possible were in changing contents and ultimately outcomes of constantly repeated Cycles!

Now, this development has already precipitated an alternative to the usual Pluralist Theories dominating current Cosmology: as they have led to a rejection of the usual Theories particularly concerned with the Origin and Subsequent Development of the Whole Universe. Indeed, all sorts of extensions to Reality are referred-to, in compiling current explanations in this significant area of ideas, actually taking most of them well beyond Reality and Deep into the heart of Ideality!

Yet, the sort of possibilities now being revealed concerning Natural Electricity and Magnetism, are not only providing a fully-explicable "Non-Big-Bang" beginning to Everything, and thereby not only providing an alternative initial primarily Electromagnetic Origin, but also delivering the best chance, today for a Nuclear Fusion means of providing Electricity in the near Future, with the efforts of Eric Lerner and his Fusion Focus team in New Jersey, USA!

So, a major New Intellectual Revolution is at least nigh, if not already underway, which will change literally every aspect of our Philosophy and Culture, if carried-through to completion, or their ultimate demise if not.

Now this paper commenced with the proposed alternative deep mathematical abstractions of Stephen Wolfram, but in taking this new Holistic Route to Understanding has expounded the real way forwards, while also demonstrating the truly vast, indeed Infinite extent of Ideality, that seduces with its detail, but nevertheless leads Mankind only into the Swamps of Myth!

There is a New Kind of Science on the way, but it isn't Wolfram's.

Science must break free of Mathematics and Pluralist thinking to deal head-on with the dynamic, evolving, material and Holist Universe we actually inhabit, for the first time.

The Fundamental Error of Quantum Mechanics

A Right Criticism

but 

The Wrong Solution

There is a Stanford "Continuing Education" Lecture, by Leonard Susskind, the purpose of which is supposedly to deliver, to a collection of mature-and-interested general auditors, an interesting Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, and its Foundations in Theory.

But Susskind's Lecture, from its very outset, instead attempts to ground his criticisms of Classical Physics, solely from a Quantum Mechanical (basically a Copenhagen) standpoint, via what seems initially to be a valid revelation of the fundamental-and-debilitating weaknesses of the former. 

He wrongly puts it down to congenital errors, due to actual "inaccuracies-in-measurements", but he does it, by inferring that the blame should be put solely upon the unavoidably inadequate means used in obtaining them, instead of Classical Physics' actually wholly flawed and totally inadequate mathematical rationality, which ever since its inception in Ancient Greece, was wholly incorrectly and damagingly transferred to ALL the Sciences.

Susskind does not even recognise this problem - but he also, in attaching the errors solely to poorly arranged-for experimental means, thereby delivering the blamed evident inaccuracies of the results obtained.

But in that he is doubly wrong: for his criticisms, which still leave him (and his auditors) totally unaware of the real causes, so, both cannot, in any way, deliver a solution, but also, in that wrong attribution, he completely hides the real causes, and, therefore, allows his "purely theoretically-perfected" equations to be the ONLY Ultimate Sources of Truth.

He establishes his position by this as totally idealist.

He establishes it NOT via Reality, but through Mathematical Rationality alone.

Theoretical Physicists have always dealt with all experimentally achieved results and consequently theoretically interpreted them via the mistakenly applied Pluralist Rationality, which sees all extracted relations solely as products of Eternally Fixed Natural Laws. That ONLY come out of the consequently formulated and theoretically confirmed Equations. The data so originally achieved will NOT be the Form that is required, but, on the contrary, that imposed upon the situation by just those constraints that ensure its total conformity to Plurality.

We do not directly measure Reality-as-is, but a Reality so constrained as to reveal more clearly only exactly what is purposely sought! But, unless the data-producing experiments required for the usual Pluralist Approach have been "perfectly applied", both in how the experiments were set-up-and-maintained throughout, they will never deliver the exactly aimed-for data, which is necessary, and will instead only produce data certain to differ from what could be either achieved in such sufficiently-rigidly controlled experiments OR taken directly from prior, "accurate" individual Equations, as all simultaneously-acting Laws are assumed to be wholly independent of one another, and hence arranged to be extracted one-at-a-time - pluralistically!

Whereas, in the actual Real Holist World outside, those could, if done correctly, actually reflect Reality-as-it-actually-is.

The problem is that the Rationality of Mathematics, as fully exemplified in Euclidian Geometry, did indeed define a legitimate Rationality - it works flawlessly - but ONLY in constrained areas. This is solely because Form, unlike almost everything else in Reality, does indeed soundly conform to Plurality's rules: a specific Logic for dealing with a Discipline composed exclusively of separable entires and FIXED relations or Unchanging Laws!

But, the trouble was, that following the universal successes of Pluralist Logic, it was applied to all the sciences, in a way which omitted the richness and dynamism of the material Universe.

In assuming that revealed relations are Eternal Natural Laws, all Real Development is excluded.

And, Susskind, in his Lecture, then proceeds to "Compound the Felony", by marshalling all his arguments, via the same mistaken Rationality. He correctly demonstrates the inability to predict in literally ALL situations, but instead makes it solely due to measured inaccuracies, whereas the most important of them are all due to the total exclusion of handling All Qualitative Change. 

And, he conversely puts down the simple addition of results into more complex situations, as due to the very same reason - rather than the actual reason that classical Pluralist Physics cannot deal with Reality-as-is, and merely substitutes, instead, the additions of multiple Fixed Laws, for the actual totally unknown and unconsidered Real Qualitative Changes that are involved.

He declares that the Double Slit Experiments all totally prove his case, whereas the opposite is true. 

Their paradoxes, on the contrary, and much like those of Zeno, expose the fundamental inadequacies of Pluralist Logic.

[See "The Theory of the Double Slit Experiments" in SHAPE Journal]

And, in a significantly ineffectual following section, he then resorts (as is usual for him) to proving his case using Mathematical Equations alone - the very cause of the major failures, to "prove" the opposite!

NOTE:

A whole series of papers dedicated to a major prior series of lectures by Susskind, has also been published in SHAPE Journal, but give-yourself-time, SHAPE has been publishing for 11 years now, delivering 125 issues with perhaps somewhat more than 1000 individual papers available!

Having spent most of my professional life posing these difficult questions, the importance of this now mature philosophical stance in addressing what is wrong with Modern Physics, is also succesfully employed across many different disciplines, from Politics to Evolutionary Biology. 

The flaws of the dominant Pluralist stance are revealed inadvertently by Susskind himself, for he passionately believes in Pluralistic Theory over-and-above any messy purely Pragmatic Extractions from Reality-as-is. 

When presented with "beautiful", generally consistent-and-coherent elegant Theory, and the messy error-filled "facts" from Nature, he resolutely chooses the Former as "containing the Real Truth". 

However difficult, Reality must be our final arbiter. 

Anything else can only be delusional!

 

What exactly is Mathematics?

Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the purest of them all?

Mathematics isn't what people think it is. 

Even its greatest exponents have little idea what their discipline is and where it came from. 

In again watching Leonard Susskind's continuing Lecture Series from Stanford University on Quantum Mechanics; he spends most of a particularly intensive Lecture upon Pure Mathematics, establishing Complex Numbers as "Descriptors of Reality".

But what they really are, as he effectively demonstrates, (though that is most certainly NOT his intention!) are pure Abstractions from Reality. And most certainly NOT a "full & comprehensive reflection (with nothing omitted & nothing added) of Reality", but instead a:-

Mirror-like reflection

- losing most of what is intrinsically involved, in order to deliver a dramatically simplified version, which both merely and exclusively deliver a virtuality, totally without its actual determining causal content, and as such conforming ONLY to a set of Rules (as in a Game), which make what it does deliver mutually consistent with one another , BUT NOT for any intrinsic causality, but instead due to that set of Rules, independent of the Reality that was the real Causal Origin.

Now as a highly competent Mathematician, myself, I, long ago switched my allegiances to Physics, for its very different Basis as a Science of Reality-as-is! It (historically, at least) always attempted to explain things as well as describing them; and in so doing was regularly forced to correct and even extend its concrete premises, in order to remain subject to its key purposes.

But what is it about Mathematics that makes it inadequate in actually explaining Reality fully? And how does it' universal utilisation in the Sciences, distort our view of the Universe?

It was discovered in the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th century BC by assuming all relations between Forms to be permanently FIXED (as they must be to enable a Formal Mathematical Rationality possible) - and this was much later embodied in the Principle of Plurality in which all such concepts are necessarily permanently fixed, for, by doing so, a fairly easily achieved self-consistent Logic as its main means could be guaranteed.

And this very first Intellectual Discipline of Mankind was so successful within Mathematics, that it was also illegitimately exported, wholesale, to both General Reasoning and all the emerging Sciences, crippling both of their attempted applications to a Clearly Evolving Reality.

Susskind constantly confirms my definition of mathematical Rationality both regularly and clearly throughout this lecture, as he extends the idea of Complex Numbers, entirely, exclusively and openly in this very way. But mentions NO actual Physics whatsoever.

Having seen many of his other Youtube Lectures, it is clear that Susskind's unifying basis for Everything he is concerned with is Mathematics: it alone Drives the World! And, he regularly sails well beyond the Three Dimensional Limits of Reality, legitimately with Time, but thereafter totally illegitimately with everything else. As long as the Determining Integrity of the reasoning is maintained, in the mathematical way, all can be stuffed into this same model!

And, of course, once everything becomes symbols on the page, related solely via Mathematical Logic, the concrete aspects fade into insignificance, enabling all sorts of Physically illegitimate reasons to justify wholly Pluralist so-called "Theories"!

Now this transformation of Physics is absolutely crucial, because the essential policemen of that Science, The Theorists, had always been absolutely essential to keep the pragmatic Technologists in their midst, in check via the physical Causality of their Theories. But, with the increasing triumph of the Mathematicians within those theorists, the whole approach in Theory was converted to wholly Pluralistic Mathematical Formulae.

Physics is being totally castrated by these changes!

And in a career-long struggle to reverse this tendency, this committed theorist had to spend the rest of his career, fighting these major inadequacies via extensive diversions into Philosophy, both of Mathematics itself, and of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, in order to find the answers, which only finally came to fruition in 2019 after many different research projects: 

The Processes and Productions of Abstraction,

The Philosophy of Mathematics,

Truly Natural Selection,

The Theory of Emergences,

Substrate Theory

and finally the Critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, which took a considerable amount of time, and which have all been published in SHAPE Journal over the last 10 years, and are available for anyone to read for free.

But when will other Scientists have this same realisation about Mathematics?

Issue 68 of SHAPE: Susskind's Universe

Read Susskind's Universe

This latest edition of SHAPE Journal tackles Cosmology, the philosophy of Mathematics and its deleterious effects on modern Physics. It does so through a critical response by this author to several lectures by leading physicist Leonard Susskind - but why single him out in particular?

Susskind is professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University in California. Stanford is a private University and is regularly ranked one of the top three universities on earth, employing the very top academics in their fields. For this reason alone Susskind is a key physicist to tackle - he is also considered one of the fathers of String Theory.

As well as this key contribution to Sub Atomic Physics he brings in many other areas of interest such as Cosmology - and presents himself as something of an all round science expert. His vast series of lectures on YouTube are a vital outlet for the latest ideas in contemporary physics based on the flawed assumption of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory. As part of my continuing attack on the latter I felt the need to take down one of the leaders of this field, and Susskind fit the bill perfectly.

In the infamous Smolin–Susskind debate, Susskind’s argument and support for the “anthropic principal” tells you everything you need to know about his quasi-religious idealism - encapsulated in the words of Brandon Carter: “The universe must be such as to admit the creation of observers within it at some stage. To paraphrase Descartes, I think, therefore the world is such.”

Susskind, for me, epitomises all that is wrong with science today. Susskind and his like are responsible for the ruination of the subject via their Pluralism and rampant Idealism. In his unapologetic support for Mathematics as the language of the Universe, Susskind entered my sights as a key target in the war against Pluralist science.

Special Issue 64: The Limits of Mathematics

This edition deals with the various limitations of Mathematics from a variety of different scientific and philosophic angles, and features a fantastic guest paper by Abdul Malek, a Theoretical Physicist and Dialectician from Montreal, Canada.

It has taken me many decades to realise quite how limited Mathematics really is. I have the advantage of having been a gifted mathematician long before I switched to Physics. I made that significant change because Mathematics is a purely descriptive abstract discipline, of a very special type, and I wanted to really understand things rather than merely describe them in abstract form.

Unfortunately, as we shall see, Physics has become little more than an extension of Idealist Mathematics. Physics was converted into a Pluralist Science of Stabilities: and one driven idealistically by Purely Formal Laws.

No wonder it is in an untranscendable terminal impass as a Science! Indeed, we can legitimately go a great deal further, and insist that it no longer investigates Reality-as-is, but instead can only deliver a distorted formal reflection of that World: it is an investigation of Ideality - the infinite World of Pure Forms alone: the Abstract Realm of Mathematics.

In short, Physics can only be saved via a wholesale rethinking of Mathematics and how we use it.

The Limits of Mathematics

 

Issue 62: The Whole and the Part

Read the latest issue of SHAPE Journal on The Whole and the Part: a loose collection of recent papers aiming to develop a nascent Science of Holism, by looking closer at the crucial oppositions involved: Plurality and Holism, the Whole and the Part.

The Whole and the Part

The Hermeneutic Cycle

Thought for Today

Bringing Holism into the Methods of Science

Why Holist Science and Iteration?

A New Holistic Iterative Method

Plurality & Holism, Mathematics & Reality

Multi-variable Relations

Dialectical Emergence